Tag Archives: Star Blogger

It is back to school time everywhere and that means back to waking up early and morning routines. The hardest part for me is getting breakfast made quickly so we can get school started at a decent hour. To help organize myself this year I had my kids help make a list of all the breakfasts we like to eat. Here is what we came up with:

French Toast

Pancakes

Waffles

Blueberry muffins

Eggs with bread in the pan

Scrambled Eggs with toast

Sunny Side Up Eggs and toast

Egg Sandwiches

Cereal

Yogurt and fruit with granola

Egg burritos

Cinnamon rolls

Homemade bread toast

English muffins

Banana Bread

Zucchini Bread

Oatmeal

As you can see most breakfast foods aren’t fast so I decided I needed a plan. What I came up with is I would make one batch of something that I could make in bulk on Sunday or Monday and they could eat it all week with some of the easier things. For example I would make up a bunch of pancakes or waffles and then we could reheat them throughout the week. Making muffins or breads the night before also is a huge timesaver in the morning!

Here is our families favorite pancake recipe that I thought you would all enjoy!

Yummiest Pancakes Ever

I always double the recipe and it makes a ton!!

2 C. Flour

3 t. Baking Powder

1 t. Salt

2 Eggs

2 C. Milk

¼ C. Vegetable Oil

¼ C. Pancake Syrup

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl with a whisk. Let rest a few minutes and then cook on a hot buttered griddle. Enjoy!!

Make Breakfast a Teaching Opportunity

As always, you can make this pancake recipe into a fun learning (or more like practice) activity as well by trying some alphabet pancakes with our Learning With Letter Pancakes. Or for a fun twist, create numbers or shapes and a little age appropriate math with your kiddos.

I would love to hear what ideas you have for helping make breakfast time fast and yummy!!

You might remember my previous post Let them cut paper! Now that you have been letting them use scissors you should have lots of little pieces of paper floating around your house. I kept mine in baggies by color so they were all ready for our final color activity. You can’t have a color unit without ending with the rainbow!! Here is a fun and fabulous activity kids of all ages will love!!!

Supplies needed:

DIRECTIONS:

I put the paper in Ikea bowls that come in rainbow colors so they are perfect for holding the paper in the right color order. They are great for color sorting activities too!

For this activity with my little ones I drew a cloud and lines for the rainbow to help them have a guide. Then they glued away and had a great time.

For the cloud they spread apart cotton balls and glued them down for a fluffy three dimensional look.

This was a hit with all my kids! My oldest daughter decided it looked like fun and wanted to make her own mosaic picture with the rainbow colors.

It is great for all of them to have fun doing an activity at their own levels!!

Tip:

White glue can be hard for little fingers to get out of the bottle. They either use half a bottle in a matter of minutes or they squeeze and squeeze and nothing comes out. Years ago I started saving my plastic lids from sour cream containers and other plastic lids to use for art. They are the perfect surface to put glue and paint on. It washes right off when you are done and you can reuse them over and over! Put a blob of glue in the middle of the lid and little ones can use cotton swabs to get the glue where they need it. Way less mess and way less wasting of glue!!!

What activities do you do that incorporate a large age group of children?

Puppets can be magical assistants when telling a story. They always seem to draw my kiddos in and make the story come to life. We have had a lot of fun with puppets over the years, but our favorites are the ones we have made ourselves. And what is even better, they are all really easy to make!

Three Simple Homemade Puppets

Sock Puppets

Sock puppets are classic puppets and can be as simple as an old sock with a face drawn on it OR you can have a little more fun and get creative. With a few random craft supplies like fabric, yarn, a glue gun and a pair of google eyes, you can create anything!

In our particular case, we made ours into super heroes and they were used not only for story time but their own story creations and imaginative play.

Paper Bag Puppets

Paper bag puppets are also a great puppet. They have a natural mouth and are easier for young children to be able to “control”. You can make a great puppet with your own paper scraps and a little glue. Or to simplify the process search the internet for “paper bag puppet templates” and look under images. There are a lot of already made, super cute templates ready for you to print, color, cut, glue and put into story telling action.

Finger Puppets

Finger puppets are great because you can use more than one or two at a time and they are a great way to work with a lot of characters at once. We have found an easy way to make these are out of paper. With a quick internet search for “paper finger puppets” (look under images to make it a faster search), you can find any character you need quickly and the kiddos always have fun coloring them before we use them.

We have all taken alphabet nature walks with our kids looking for things that begin with the letter A (apple tree), B (bird), C (cactus), D (dandelion) etc. We did a little twist on this the last time we went on a walk and we went looking for letters. We didn’t look at signs or license plates but looked at architecture and nature to find things that looked like letters.

This was a little hard at first because you have to think out of the box a little bit but once they got the hang of it, it was super fun. I let each of the kids take pictures of the letters they found.

They love using my good camera so I think this was their favorite part. We had a little lesson on how to take good photos before we started. We practiced centering the letter in the picture and zooming. This activity kept all of my kids ages 10 and under busy for quite awhile. My three year old even loved it. She found a lot of the letter “O”. It was fun doing an activity that they all got into.

Here are some of our favorite letters….

My girls have decided that they want to make an alphabet book with all the letters we have found. We are planning a trip to a historic park soon to see if we can finish our alphabet.

You can also put them together to spell words for signs. If you get the whole alphabet, you can practice writing spelling words and simple sentences. The possibilities are endless!!!

I would love to hear your ideas on what you do with your nature alphabet!!

Family story time is one of the most important times of the day, but as my children get older it gets a little more difficult. I have 6 kids that range in age from 1-10 with three readers, one almost reader and two little ones. The big kids like to read their own books at night and with the baby sometimes it is just easier to skip reading together. In order to help keep me accountable and get the all the kids excited about reading together I have come up with a great plan!!

I pick one book for every day of the month and then wrap them up!! Sometimes we do a theme such as the holiday of the month, an author study or just fun random books. The kids take turns each night opening the books and they are always excited to see what we are reading.

Tips and tricks

If I do not have enough books that fit my theme, I just throw in a random book that we love. With five girls we read a lot of Fancy Nancy! Wrapping paper can be kind of pricey so newspaper, comics and butcher paper work fabulous! The kids help wrap the books, too, which makes it an easy activity to pull off.

I am always on the lookout for fun educational ways to spend the holidays. This is one of my kids favorite Valentine activities that we do every year. I love it when I come up with an idea that they like!

Start by doing a craft, all kiddos like that! We made Love Bugs with leftover scrapbook paper, but construction paper would work just fine too. As you can see from the picture, it’s pretty self explanatory and easy!! We made the wings heart shaped and accordion folded the arms and legs to make it stand out more. Googly eyes and pipe cleaners make every craft more fun.

When we were done, we learned about haiku poems and made poems about our Love Bugs.

Haiku Facts:

It is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. (Take a trip to the map and find Japan).

It consists of three lines.

The first and last lines have five syllables.

The middle line has seven syllables.

They rarely rhyme.

Some examples of ours are:

“I have a love bug
Her name is Curly Shirley
She likes to have fun”

Delaney age 5

“I love my love bug
Because its just like my mom
Cause she’s the best mom”

Sydney age 8

“Will you be my friend?
My name is Miss Polka Dots
Be my Valentine?”

Kennedy age 7

We always have lots of fun with this and it is neat to see how their poems change as they get older. I hope you try it out with your family. I would love to hear what your poems are!!

Something I have learned from my children is that they love math, especially when it is in the form of a game. Our friend taught us this game and my kiddos had a blast. You know you have a good game when they keep asking to play it again! This game is perfect for all levels and a great way to practice math skills. If your child can count, they can play this.

What You Need:

Piece of paper

Pen/marker

1-2 dice

Base ten blocks – we borrowed ours from a friend. 10 of each is perfect

or

If you do not have access to base ten blocks, then you can get creative. Here are some ideas for alternatives:

Ones – you can use mini marshmallows, cherrios, small crackers, etc

Tens – you can use popsicle/craft sticks, cue tips, or anything stick like

Hundreds – you can use a piece of bread, graham cracker, etc

Directions:

The rules for this game are pretty simple. The goal of the game is to get to 100 hundred by rolling the dice.

Set up your board by drawing/creating 3 categories on a piece of paper. Label each category with “Ones”, “Tens”, “Hundreds”.

Player rolls the dice and adds that many ones to the “Ones”. Then they roll again and continue adding the ones until they have reached 10. Then they exchange their 10 ones for a tens stick. Player will continue rolling until they get 10 tens and will then be able to trade for a hundreds block.

See example below: Player rolled 7 on their first roll, so they put 7 blocks in the “Ones” section. 2nd roll the player rolled a 4, so they add 4 ones to the “Ones” section. When they reach 10 in the “Ones” section, they exchange will exchange 10 of the ones for 1 ten block.

Player will continue rolling until they get 10 tens and will then be able to trade for a hundreds block.

This game can be played as a one player game or played as a team game. We played it as individuals this time, but they liked to see how their sibling was doing.

We had a lot of fun with this game and it can be easily adjusted for each child’s learning level. I thought my second grader would think it was a boring “little kids” game, but he was just as much into it as my kindergartner. And after 30+ minutes of playing they still wanted to keep going.

As summer is wrapping up for us, school is on my mind as I am sure it is with most parents. Here are 4 tips to help prep your child for their first day of preschool or kindergarten. Ready or not, here they go!

Have Playdates

Getting to know other children is healthy for your child. Invite friends over for playdates and go to other friends’ houses, too. This is a great way for your child to learn how to get along with others because not everyone plays the same. If you are new to your area or not comfortable going to other people’s homes yet, try a park or visiting a story time at your local library. Both are free events and great places to meet other parents/children your child’s age.

Leave Them

Eventually, the day will come when you have to leave your child at the door of his/her kindergarten class. Do NOT let that be your first time apart! To avoid a sad scene at your first school drop off, leave them every now and then before that day comes. There are many different ways you can start practicing your separation. You can sign them up for preschool before kindergarten starts, leave them at a friend’s house for a playdate on their own or leave them with a babysitter for a night out with your spouse, just to name a few. You will get a little time to yourself to get something done on your own and they will be able to learn how to get along with others while you are not in the room and know that you are going to come back for them.

Practice Lunch

If your child is going to be eating lunch at school, it is a great idea to practice eating lunch. Find out how long they will have to eat and give them a test run at least once before school starts so they have a general idea of how it is going to go.

The summer before my son went into kindergarten I realized that he had never had a sack lunch and did not know how open juice boxes or milk containers. And I will admit, I was deathly afraid he would see all the kids at lunch and think it would be fun to start a food fight! We started practicing a week before school so I could at least show him the basics and walk him through what would be expected of him (i.e. cleaning up, what to throw away etc.). The first day, I helped him do everything just so we did not have him experimenting. Every day I did less until he was doing it all on his own.

Let Them Get Excited

As sad as you may be about your kiddo going off to school, do NOT take their excitement away from them. Your child should be excited about going to school. So, if you have to hide your sadness, do it! After my daughter’s first few days at school, she came home with this note below and giggled with excitement all weekend long for me to “leave her at the door with a hug and a kiss.”

Your child not having a meltdown at the door when you say goodbye is a good thing. It does not mean they will not miss you, but instead it means that they are ready and prepared. Give yourself a well deserved pat on the back because you just did something awesome!

Once summer break started in our house, this mom discovered we had an uninvited friend who wanted to be the center of attention ALL of the time. The television! I should have expected it, but I had hoped to have a better handle on it. Fortunately, it recently stopped working for a couple of days and my 5 year old almost kindergartner daughter and I found ourselves alone in a quiet house with not much to do.

We read all the princess books we could handle for one afternoon and then decided it was time to break into the game closet and choose a fun game. This time she chose Yahtzee! As we started to play I remembered how many different math skills can be developed/practiced while playing Yahtzee.

Some of the math skills Yahtzee helps teach:

Basic Counting

For my daughter, this was a great way for her to reinforce over and over again basic counting skills. She could easily count the dots on each die and it was not long before she could recognize she rolled twos or threes, for example, without having to count each individual dice.

Pattern Recognition

While playing we had the opportunity to talk about patterns. For instance, putting the dice in 1-2-3-4-5 order or 2-3-4-5 order, looking for dice all of the same number, looking for two dice of one number and three of another, etc. She was even the one who first pointed this out to me when she stated, “I found a pattern” as she put her dice in order for a large straight.

Addition/Advanced counting

At the end of each of her turns if we needed the total amount of points, it was her job to count all the “dots” up. This allowed her to practice counting well in to the 20′s which she does not get to practice often with most of the other dice games we play that only have one or two dice.

Patience

We learned that rolling a handful of dice and hoping to get all of the same number over and over again, takes patience and we did not always get what we want. It was also perfect opportunity for her to practice waiting for her turn as she had to wait for me to add up my “dots”.

Writing Numbers

This is a great game to help young players practice writing their numbers, too. I will admit this skill is a little advanced for my daughter at the moment, but perfect for her 7 year old brother who wanted to jump in when he got home. He is also able to help make sure his sister adds everything up correctly, also great practice for him too. If they want to play with out me, which is happening often, I encourage them to stick to the top half of the game where they aim for rolling all of the same numbers.

Since my kiddos have discovered the Yahtzee game, they have been playing it a ton. They think they are playing and I am secretly doing a little happy dance as they are doing something educational without a fight during their summer break!

Summer break is just around the corner! Are you ready for it? I felt myself get a little antsy about a month ago to start planning some summer fun for my kiddos. I know from experience that when I do not plan ahead of time, we miss out on some fun activities during the summer months. Even making a list of summer possibilities helps give us a general guide of what we want to get done during the summer. NOW is the perfect time to get planning for summer fun. One way to do this is to make a Summer Bucket List.

Last year I sat down with my kiddos and asked them to tell me some things they wanted to do during the summer and made that into our Summer Bucket List. They loved being able to have input on what we were going to do. I took their ideas and made it into a list that they could check off and hung it on the wall where everyone would be able to see it. You can see on our Summer Bucket List that they got pretty creative and specific (i.e. “play queen”). We kept our list pretty simple, as we had a lot of reading we wanted to do last summer.

Post navigation

Join our Learning Circle.

By becoming a member of the Rusty and Rosy Learning Circle, you'll receive special promotions and exclusive offers from Rusty and Rosy. Join now. It's easy and it's free. Simply fill out the fields below.